Berserk (BERSERK.WAD)

BERSERK
by Jon Landis

Jon Landis had a pretty full career in the early days of Doom history. He authored an episode for Doom (Eye of the Beholder), a tricksy minisode of Doom II levels (Eye of the Beholder II), and contributed a few levels to STRAIN. This little level (well, maybe not little) is BERSERK, his first offering, not to be found included in Eye of the Beholder along with his other E2 levels. And, well, for reasons you might find evident on a cursory viewing. Berserk has some of Landis's quirks that he would carry on to his later outings, but it's a very rough construction, released in 1994 for the E2M1 slot.

Eye of the Beholder II (EOB2S.WAD)

Jon Landis is somewhat notorious for his unforgiving, dickish gimmick maps for the original Doom, most of which appeared in his hard-to-find Eye of the Beholder. Eye of the Beholder II, released in 1995, is a set of seven maps constructed for Doom II, somewhat in the same vein, but Landis has tightened up his design to make this a very short series of brain-teasers, and somewhat defanged, to boot. You won't have anything approaching the level of !PIPE! in here, anyway. There are still some moments of frustration, but EOB2S is a different beast. There's still no story, and the DeHackEd lump wouldn't work for me in ZDoom, but from the description of MAP07, I assume it makes specterized Hell knights or something of the like.

Eye of the Beholder (EOB.WAD)

Jon Landis was one of '94's pioneering WAD authors, going on to contribute to STRAIN of all things. Eye of the Beholder, originally released in 1994 (with a small '95 update) has been lost to the sands of time as far as the archives are concerned, funny considering there is no draconian distribution clause. Some of these maps will look familiar to veterans - !POIS!, !PIPE!, and !WOW! can all be found here as E2M1, E2M2 and E2M8, respectively. The others, as far as I know, are all brand new additions to the Landis library of gameplay. So, EOB is an episode replacement for The Shores of Hell. There's no attached story, but Landis loves to talk about each of the levels in his .TXT, going so far as to give you hints, and you'll need them.

STRAIN (STRAIN.WAD)

STRAIN is a 32-map partial conversion created by the Alpha Dog Alliance, a loose confederation of Doom enthusiasts, many of them fairly prolific in the community at the time. While some I recognize from their individual works, others are familiar contributors to the community WADs of the past (MM and MMII) and then present (Requiem). STRAIN was in production for quite some time; Patterson (the project director) spoke of work stalling while a number of 1996 high-profile WADs were released (some of their authors also contributing to STRAIN!). Fortunately, STRAIN saw a release, and though it has a few very short levels and some donations (from the cancelled Serenity IV project and Dystopia 3), it would still be worth your attention if half the WAD went missing.